


Endure

by Hmpf_MacSlow



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Experimental, Far-Future, Gen, Memory, Post-Gathering, Watchers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-08-31
Updated: 2011-03-15
Packaged: 2017-10-13 11:31:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 3,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/136883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hmpf_MacSlow/pseuds/Hmpf_MacSlow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is how it ends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. This is how it ends

**Author's Note:**

> A revised version of a revised version of a revised version of a fic I first published in or around 2003. Something I could never stop tinkering with, because it was more obviously flawed, as well as more obviously promising than most of my other stuff. I doubt this will be this story's final form.
> 
> ***A note on format:*** Please don't read this in "View entire work" format. The reason I posted it in chapters is that I found out, after much trial and error, that it read a lot better when punctuated by short pauses, the kind you experience when you have to click on a link to read the next bit. That's why I ended up splitting the fic into nineteen parts which, on my website, used to be displayed on nineteen linked pages. The chapter mode here in the archive seemed the best way to imitate that format.

**This is how it ends.**

A man on a desert plain, standing by a hole he has dug with his bare hands. He stands slumped yet proud, slack only with exhaustion and a hint of tired derision. His hands hang by his sides as if lifeless. His head is inclined the slightest bit, but not enough to signal submission - not to the people who have come to execute him.

_Yes, this is how it ends. This is how it ends --_

_Remember._


	2. Gone

This is the last desert; the last in a long line of wastelands. Calloused by the searing sand of the ages, his feet remember what he has long forgotten. He digs his toes into the dust, feels its finest particles enter every pore of his dry skin. The sensation reverberates, and he suddenly knows it for the feel of home.

His path has begun in a desert and now it ends in another. That much he knows. That much, and not much else. Gone is the name he has carried most recently, gone the names that preceded it; gone the name, legendary now, that has been his almost since the beginning. Gone the language he last spoke, and the ones that went before; gone, maybe, the capacity for language itself. Gone, long gone, any memory of the blue planet of his birth.

Gone also the man he has killed here, an indeterminate time ago - the last in a long line of men, women and children who have died by his hand. The last.

His mind as light as a feather.


	3. Walking

Nothingness, unbroken prospect of pale grey, stretches all around him, all the same.

He walks.

All his life he has run, yet this is different. There is no running away now - nothing to run from, nowhere to run. He walks with small steps, feet stirring up tiny clouds of dust, eyes fixed on nothing, and it is as if he does not move at all, for nothing changes; as if he does not see at all, for there is no horizon, the emptiness of the ground melting into the emptiness of the sky. He could be blind, and it would not make a difference.

Behind him, the dust he has stirred up settles down again in his footprints, to lie undisturbed for

another

billion

 

years.


	4. Moths

Sun, smoldering ball of light dropping fast, as if pulled by gravity that some primal sense in him still identifies as too high.

His shadow lengthens, stretches for miles; disappears. As light leaks away, a word flutters behind his eyes, a moth in his mind's night. He tries to catch it, clumsily holds it with his lips: "nightfall -- ;" lets it go.

It drops to the ground, dead.

Another word begins to stir its wings, a word belonging to another language, although he is not aware of different languages anymore; not aware of words as words, just delicate moths, fluttering, falling, dead.

The word lingers for a while, but he does not try to catch it. It vanishes as suddenly as it appeared.

He has spoken many languages in his time, forgotten many languages, but he does not remember this now, does not remember Akkadian, or Latin, or English, or even Unified Earth Standard. There are no words -- no memories. There are only moths, dying in his night, separated by vast expanses of - - - - - - - - - - - - - - nothing - - - - - - - - - - - - - - at - - - - - - - - - - - - - - all.


	5. Night

Black gravity, pulling at his mind. Ground a solid negation, draining him. Thought evaporating. Heat seeping from the ground up into the sky. His soft footfall; his breath; no sound of wind. Walking -- walking –-

Lost.

He wants to shout, but cannot remember how, or what. He raises his face to the stars -- an ancient impulse -- but they are foreign: silent and cold and devoid of meaning.

He makes a sound and stops, surprised. Then laughs again. Or maybe sobs. Flops down on his back in the cooling sand, rakes his fingers through it -- rakes patterns in the starlight, and suddenly realizes he is praying.

He stops his raking and flattens his hands slowly against the ground. The planet is quiet, patient, and immense under his palms as he lies praying in a language he does not understand to gods he neither remembers nor believes in, while strange stars wander across the sky.

Not listening.

Panic shakes him, makes his teeth clatter.


	6. Later

Calmer. Colder.

His fingers, splayed in dust, cold as death. He is aware of the freezing temperature in a detached way. Frost is ringing his nostrils, white crystals sit in his eyebrows and in his hair, but he does not feel the cold. Time moves slowly towards morning, but he is not tired, and although he has walked all day, maybe many days, under scorching sun, he does not feel thirst.

The stars above him are huge. He lies looking up at them, feeling the cold kill off the cells of his toes and fingers. Intermittently he falls asleep, and when he reawakes, the stars have moved a little further on their slow journey. They are pinpricks in a solid fabric of night.

Through them, something greater than the emptiness can be glimpsed. An absolute, the opposite of nothingness.

It scares him.

He lies all night, feeling the cold numb his fingers and toes, feeling it numb his arms, his legs, feeling it creep into his lungs. Watching his breath rise to cloud the sky.

It is almost morning when he dies.


	7. Alive

Blinding sun in staring eyes. Sharp intake of breath into hurting lungs. He closes his eyes and waits for the burned retinas to repair themselves. When he opens them again, the sun is a bright white disk in the colourless sky above him. He covers his eyes with his hands and rubs them. They feel raw and dry. Animal instinct tells him that he needs water, but it does not register on any conscious level of his mind.

He gets up and walks.

Walks.

Time passes; or not.

His depleted mind can still imagine eternity, eternal life, eternal nothing, movement going nowhere, seconds lasting millennia, millennia lasting seconds -- it is all running into one now, and maybe he has been here forever because he cannot remember another life, another world, cannot remember what could take this terror away.

Nothingness is all around him, inside him, and only one thing could liberate him. A greater nothingness: to cease.

He cannot allow it. He has to endure.


	8. Stranger

Shimmer in the distance.

Reflected heat is rippling the air. Dust before him virginal, almost completely even. Ground behind riddled with the dotted line of steps. Step by step by step he is perforating the desert.

It would be easy to let go of the shreds of his beleaguered sanity -- let flooding madness fill the empty spaces of his mind with unheard noise and wild colour, with scraps of that which may have been, and of that which never was. Imagine a language of insanity, replace the desert with a world of his making.

Oblivion beckons, and he wants to give in to it. To keep fighting takes almost more strength than he has left. The battle, step by step by stumbling step, strips him of all defences, and he glances in bewilderment at the stranger this reveals to him. Sees: much fear, some pride, some aimless love. At the center: an indomitable will to survive -- an imperative that determines who he is, and is determined by what he is.


	9. Steps

One step.  
\------------- No horizon.  
Another step.  
\------------- No colour.  
Another step.  
\------------- Dust. . .  
Another -  
\------------- . . . muffling. . .  
\- step.  
\------------- . . . sound.  
Another -  
\------------- No. . .  
\- step.  
\------------- escape.

step  
\------------- dry air  
step  
\------------- hot ground  
step  
\------------- sun  
another  
\------------- beating  
step  
\------------- down  
another  
\------------- no escape  


and

terror

creeping up his spine --

panic constricting his throat --

heartbeat, breath quickening -- quickening --

He stumbles and falls, and lies, exhausted. Waiting, once again, for death. Yet knows, with his whole mind and body, that he has to endure. That is what he does, what he is. He is the one who survives. Who observes, who remembers.

So he walks on. Every step a victory of his will. Every victory ultimately pointless.

In the distance ahead, something catches the sun.

Bright. Shiny.


	10. Thing

Site of disaster, quiet, incomprehensible, and dead.

Sleek shape of glinting metal, leaning at an angle, marked with signs he cannot read.

There are breaches in the hull of the impossible thing, tongues of soot flecking the once immaculate surface. He puts a hand against sun-heated metal, shape and material eerily familiar. There is a faint, sharp smell in the air -- familiar, it, too.

He walks around it, marvelling at its size. He touches it, runs his hand over the smooth, hot surface; steps back to look it up and down, then touches it again, almost compulsively. Brings his face close to it, sniffs it, sees puzzled eyes looking back at him out of the reflecting surface. Leans his head against it, eyes closed. Then steps back, and opens his eyes again to meet the reflection's unwavering gaze. Scared eyes under short, unkempt hair dusted grey. He runs a hand through the dusty mop, sees the mirror image ape his move. He stops. Lets the hand fall to his side, slowly. Watches, but does not understand the question in the eyes that watch him. Finally, after a time -- minutes? days? -- turns away, and trudges on, following a line of footprints leading away from the shiny thing.

Not wondering whose they are.


	11. . . .

Walking -- slowly, painfully.

Head down, tendons of his neck so slack his head bobs with every step. Knees buckling, muscles of his legs unwilling to carry him. His body running on the power of despair and deeply rooted determination. A determination without purpose, now, but strong enough, old enough, to govern his being like a curse. His shoulders bowed. His whole body slumping, drawn by the ground -- wanting to sink down into the sand, be covered by the soft, soft sand. . .

He resists.

Endures.

He walks, dragging his feet, and the sand rewards him with a softly scraping sound that very faintly pleases him. When he turns back after a while, raising his head to follow the track of his steps, the metal hull has dwindled to a shiny dot. Almost out of sight. He lets his gaze drop and turns away.

Uniformity wiping the slippery table of his memory clean.


	12. Permutations

Darkness comes. Passes.

He walks.

In the early morning a star falls slowly, tearing a bright gash across the sky. As he watches, a brief fire of memory is kindled in reply, leaves a residue of understanding.

It is not a star he is watching. It is a capsule for people to travel in.

He has seen one. . . when? Not long ago.

Like an island appearing from dense fog, the remembered image grows clearer. The gently curving surface; the man in the mirror. Thin frame, grey dusty skin.

He closes his eyes to see more clearly.

Hazel eyes regard him without blinking.

Then, the emptiness in his mind screams, and shatters. And the face in the mirror changes --

Changes:

a boy's face, sun-darkened and grave, whose eyes hide terror behind immutable glass;

a youth, grim, all but shaking with rage and an inconsolable sadness;

a young man, exultant, in love, but his eyes bespeak a restlessness that is growing;

a man in shock, tears and blood on a face drawn with pain;

a man drifting through centuries: a farmer, a craftsman, a merchant, a king;

a priest, a hermit (facade of desperate calm);

a madman;

a murderer, a torturer (dead eyes in a mask of cold blue);

a hermit again.

Faces and faces. . . a thousand of them, thousands of them -- all different, all the same. The abyss of years yawning behind.

At last, the parade of years and faces draws to an end; fades into one last face, one last day. Mild golden afternoon lies languidly on wildly tangled grass. In a patch of gently swaying flowers that stand almost as high as his head, a man is sitting with a book on his knees. Although time has not left its telltale lines on his face, nor turned the dark hair to silver, there is no mistaking him for anything but what he is: a creature of immense age. Profoundly at ease, at home at any time, any place, he is as much a part of the garden as the grass, and yet detached as the wind that moves the leaves. He is rooted, not in the soil of this garden, nor of this planet, but in life itself, a part of the unending stream of its manifold manifestations almost since the beginning of history.

 _Sitting on the ground, flowers nodding all around him in an asynchronous dance, strangely animate, bewildering and familiar at once. The leather-bound tome a heavy weight on his knees. The feeling of dread a heavy weight in the pit of his stomach. A momentous event has occurred, but the world has not noticed. If he has any say in it, it never will._

 _He closes the book. Draws a breath, and finds, to his surprise, that the soft fragrance of the flowers calms the raw fear clawing at his insides. So he remains there, among the flowers, breathing very slowly and deliberately with closed eyes, until a deep, resigned calm settles on him._

When he opens his eyes again, the desert is back, infinitely patient.

He walks.


	13. Prey

The memory of fear is vivid. Fear, like a special kind of light throwing a single moment, every single moment, into sharp relief. Fear, and something else. Resignation, yes, and something else.

A pale sense of irony shudders through him, and his mouth twitches with the sudden senseless memory of a grin. Nothingness retreats for a moment, and there are fragments, feelings. . . Fragments without context, unintelligible. Feelings, inexplicable as a stranger's. So, now, a fragment of bitter amusement; the ghost of a wolfish grimace; the prey -- himself?

Puzzled, he stops. The grey plain loses reality as he tries to focus on the beginnings of a thought. Hard, so hard to catch hold of it.

Fleeting images fade in and out of his awareness, rise and dance and are blown away.

Fade into memory.


	14. No escape

_Watching from a distance as the silver capsule tumbles towards the ground, trailing a tail of fire. The impact is hard and final and the dust cloud rises high. A sense of fate is settling down deep inside him as he sees it, mixing with cold appreciation of the precision of his work._

 _He has always seen the beauty in destruction._

 _Then the dust begins to settle, and time, he knows, is running out._

 _Shutting away fear he moves with quiet determination. He takes a detached, surreal pleasure in the clean lines of his ship even as he is tossing the chemical grenade. The ground shakes with the blast. He has plugged his ears, but he sees the ship shudder, lean drunkenly -- keel over. Lazy flames are licking the edges of the ragged hull breach._

 _No way back now._

 _He hefts his sword._

 _Heads for the crash site._


	15. Desert

The world reels. The image crumbles to sand. He finds himself on his knees in a desert of disintegrated memories. Shaking violently. Hot air slowly rasping in and out of his lungs.

Memory sifting away.


	16. Sand

Walking.

Dragging his feet -- slowly -- slowly. Watching his feet, long dusty toes disturbing the miniature hills and valleys of the trail. Someone's traces in the sand. Grey sand, dead, empty. Flat and unbroken beside the trail. Grey sand collecting under his toenails. Clinging to him, a thin grey shroud: the desert claiming him. The desert and him becoming one. Every grain of sand a broken memory. Every memory a grain of sand.

He walks in a stupor of exhaustion. Soft sand caressing the soles of his feet. Hot sand burning the soles of his feet. Hot sun beating down on him, making his head throb. He walks with eyes half-closed, hanging his head. Lost, tired. So tired. He has been tired for a long time.

Grey sand filling his mind.


	17. Voices

Lost in emptiness, he does not notice the voices at first. They are building in the back of his head -- a slowly rising wind, a low murmur moving above the desert. A whisper coming from all sides at once. Voices. Not speaking to him; not speaking to each other. Each voice talking only to itself. They are speaking in languages that have been dead for thousands of years. They are whispering weakly, echoes of lives lived thousands of years ago. Echoing off the inside of his mind. He closes his eyes and listens, although there is nothing to understand. And maybe their murmur has indeed raised a wind in the quiet desert, for he finds it easier to move as he listens, as if the voices are driving him now, gently pushing him onwards.


	18. Body

Something in his way.

He trips, falls, lies unmoving -- spread awkwardly across the thing in his path. Even with his eyes closed he recognizes it as a human body. His stomach is resting on the corpse's back, the dead man's arm wedged under his chest. Stench of blood and putrefaction. He opens his eyes and pushes himself up, painfully, away from blood-blackened ground. Crawls away from the corpse, and cuts his hand on a razor-sharp sword half-covered by sand. With great care he clambers over the sword on all fours, then sits down, legs crossed, facing the corpse, sucking his bleeding hand. The body's head lies a way off. Another sword has been pushed into the ground, rising from the grey surface like a marker for buried treasure, blade stained dark. Sand around it molten to glass.

Whispers.

 _This is where he died. This is where you died. This is where we died._

He does not understand the words, but he understands the message.

 _Silly, silly. . . You ended up a hero, after all. Who would have thought?_ A single voice now.

He bites the heel of his hand, feels blood on his tongue, squeezes his eyes shut.

 _Why didn't you let him kill you? Leave him to the madness. . . take the easy way out? Because you are a survivor, eh? It_ is _what you do best. But was there a point. . . in surviving_ this?

His body is shaking as he begins to giggle, dry and hard.

 _I've got to hand it to you, you built a perfect trap. Brutal, yet elegant all the same. It's quite a feat, building an inescapable trap for yourself. You should be proud of yourself._

He abandons all control and gives in to the fit. Releases his hand from his teeth and thrusts it deep into the soft dust. Thrusts both his hands into the dust, burrows deeper as he surrenders.

 _So you saved humankind from a madman. That was noble, but it wasn't very bright. You could have avoided the fight if you were afraid of the outcome._ Any _outcome. You could have shot him down and left, and lived another ten thousand years. He challenged you, but you were never one to take that too seriously. . . Why did you take his head, brother, when you were certain that it would overwhelm you?_

He clenches handfuls of dust, sitting on all fours like an animal. His muscles cramping. His eyes too dry to tear up. The uncontrollable need to giggle subsides slowly.

 _You knew this would happen, didn't you? Knew you'd lose it after the Quickening._ The _Quickening. That's why you took precautions._

He remembers the gash of light in the night sky, the craft streaking through the atmosphere.

Handful by handful, he begins to dig. And later, hours later, when the hole is as deep as the shifting sands will allow, simply sits. Waits. And is not surprised when he hears the crunch of feet behind him. Not surprised at the cold edge of the blade against his neck.


	19. This is how it ends.

'Get up.' Dispassionate.

He rises, slowly and stiff as an old man.

'Turn around.'

He turns. Takes in the group of grey-suited men and women who have assembled in a semicircle around him. They look self-important and a little scared, and very young. They carry guns, except for the one holding the sword that is at his throat.

A woman steps forward and addresses him.

'Who are you?' A trembling is in her voice, and in her hands that are holding her weapon. He does not reply, cannot reply, but watches her lower lip shake ever so slightly.

The tip of the sword still at his neck.

'Who cares what his name is? He's history.' A too loud voice, too harsh. Falling into an embarrassed silence. (The silence of conspirators sworn to commit sacrilege, frightened by their own intentions.)

The woman turns her head, her eyes flaming. 'Yes, he is that. History incarnate.' Awe and a sort of horror lend force to her voice. 'We are about to delete a large part of human memory. The least we can do is record his name.'

'What for?' A man, soft-spoken. His face, honest, coolly rational, betrays an uneasiness, subdued by righteousness. His eyes meet their captive's squarely as his voice grows bolder. 'What good will it do him if we record his name in a chronicle no one will ever read? What good will it do _us_? The days of the chronicles are over. And, human memory? Look at him -- I don't think he even understands us. Whoever tipped us off probably did him a favour.'

Their captive makes a noise, a half-snort of laughter that turns into a wracking cough.

For what seems like a long while they watch him as he laughs, chokes, laughs painfully. Then one of them turns his gaze on the freshly dug hole.

'Strange impulse, to try to bury him, innit?' A nod towards the headless corpse.

The woman, the leader, is still watching the captive. Understanding drips down her spine like ice water, raising every hair on her body despite the dry heat. She has to clear her throat before she finds her voice again.

'I don't think he dug that grave. . . for that one. I think I have an idea who. . . tipped us off. . .' Her voice trails off.

The ancient man stops laughing; calms. Suddenly she can see age and the remnants of wisdom in his face. His eyes are deep, and for a second or two she feels dizzy.

He draws himself up a bit, straightens his back, and the man who is holding the sword steps back and grips the hilt tighter. The captive smirks.

'Who is he?' someone whispers.

'Does it matter?' someone else replies.

The muzzles of the guns pointed at the enigma are shaking almost imperceptibly.

'Is this the right thing. . .?'

'What else could we do?'

'Observe and record,' with a little despairing laugh.

'It's the merciful thing to do.'

'Mercy. . .'

He stands, an expression between calm amusement and disdain on his face. He does not look at the sword, but at their faces, young and frightened and naked before him. At last, his gaze comes to rest on the leader's face, and the disdain fades. Some form of communication passes between them. A second stretches into eternity.

She gives the command.

The sword comes down in a gleaming arc, and the world

  


ends.


End file.
